“IT” in an
instant, the nose
knows “IT” with
one whiff.
We search our days
for similar warmth and
familiar tastes; a fireside
seat and the hint of
cinnamon and clove.
The sun can
slant itself
in just the same
way; the air can
blow itself in
a long known
fashion. That
then becomes
“IT” and we
have arrived.
What is our life
but an ongoing
and defiant shaping
of all that is
into all that
used to be.
This is
where the
old can touch the
new; the
past can
change our
future.
We begin ourselves in
a place called home;
a place that
has made all the difference.
It gave us
the lexicon of
being that we carried
and used the remainder
of our days
to make sense
of all that is.
Place is the
kind of thing
that gets under
the nails, behind
the ears, and
between the toes.
It follows you
everywhere—
lending just a
hint of displacement
and yearning toward
the sun of home—
a flower turning
to the solar path;
all day long.
It Is Here
It is here
that the flatter lands
and ambling slopes
turn upward toward
the sky. A red shale
mountain along the
edges of the mountains;
an inkling of rocks
climbing out of the earth.
A true foothill
of and in its own right.
There is a stark
and yet subtle rise
at just this place
along the river where
the Green Hill and
River Roads meet.
Each day I pass this
spot there is a feeling
in the center of my me
that says, “This is
where one place becomes
another. This is the place
of uniqueness among a somewhat
feeling flatland of sameness
in life and degree.”
It excites the soul
to notice such things.
Delight floods the heart
directly from the sensibility
and collaboration grown
from the mixed arrangement
of the eyes and mind.
Beauty is born by an
inner capturing of the visible
disturbance in the line of
sight somehow translated
to mean something beyond just
that thing it holds in view.
From this point forward
the foothills show off their
rivuleted alluviations that
sing toward the earth from
their peaks just beyond the
tall pines. Small mountain falls
burst forth in the melting of the
snows to reveal a spring that
would remain unnoticed on most
days—hidden under leaf and
limb,
